Paul Michael Kurtz
Biographic Data
| ID | 279040 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Michael Kurtz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Kurtz |
| SIGNATURE | KURTZ P M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0900-1654 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Jewish Catholicism
This article makes three arguments. First, it contends that the history of modern scholarship on ancient Judaism has erased Catholic scholars. As nineteenth-century Protestants dismissed Catholics as unscientific and unmodern, so contemporary historiography reinscribes those polemics. Second, the inquiry claims that some Catholics considered themselves part of a common historical science. In their sources, genres, accounts, and values, they opera…
Response to Adam Sutcliffe
These pages respond to insightful comments by Adam Sutcliffe on the author’s monograph ‘Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan: The Religion of Israel in Protestant Germany, 1871–1918’ (Mohr Siebeck, 2018) - first raised at a 2019 book review panel in Oxford and then elaborated in written form for this forum. The response focuses on four key issues: the place of Jewish voices, the representativity of the scholars selected for study, the rise of new sciences …
Is Kant among the Prophets? Hebrew Prophecy and German Historical Thought, 1880–1920
This article examines the interpretation of Hebrew prophecy by German Protestant scholars in the era of 1880–1920. It argues, first, that Old Testament interpreters valued the prophets since they presented God as the guiding force behind human history and, second, that these theologians cum philologians saw the prophetic conception of history as anticipating their own understanding of God in the world. The inquiry bases this argument on a reading…
The Philological Apparatus
Philology haunts the humanities, through both its defendants and its detractors. This article examines the construction of philology as the premier science of the long nineteenth century in Europe. It aims to bring the history of philology up to date by taking it seriously as a science and giving it the kind of treatment that has dominated the history of science for the last generation: to reveal how practices, instruments, and cooperation create…
Defining Hellenistic Jews in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Hellenic language and culture occupy a deeply ambivalent place in the mapping of Jewish history. If the entanglement of the Jewish and the Greek became especially conflicted for modern Jews in philhellenic Europe, nowhere was it more vexed than in the German-speaking lands of the long nineteenth century. Amidst the modern redefinition of what it meant to be Jewish as well as doubts about the genuine Jewishness of Hellenistic Judaism, how did scho…
Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan
What did biblical scholars, theologians, orientalists, philologists, and ancient historians of the 19th century consider religion and history to be? How did they understand these conceptual categories, and why did they study them in the manner they did? Analyzing the figures of Julius Wellhausen and Hermann Gunkel, Paul Michael Kurtz examines the historiography of ancient Israel in the German Empire through the prism of religion, as a structuring…
How Nineteenth-century German Classicists Wrote the Jews Out of Ancient History
This essay considers why Jewish antiquity largely fell outside the purview of ancient historians in the Germanies for over half a century, between 1820 and 1880, and examines the nature of those portraits that did, in fact, arise. To do so, it interrogates discussions of Jewish antiquity in this half-century against the background of those political and national values that were consolidating across the German states. Ultimately, the article clai…
Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan
In this work, Paul Michael Kurtz examines the historiography of ancient Israel in the German Empire through the prism of religion, as a structuring framework not only for writings on the past but also for the writers of that past themselves. The author investigates what biblical scholars, theologians, orientalists, philologists, and ancient historians considered »religion« and »history« to be, how they understood these conceptual categories, and …
Waiting at Nemi
In the first edition of his now fabled Golden Bough , James George Frazer began with the tale of an unnamed priest-king waiting for his slayer and successor in the sacred grove at Nemi. “A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest,” wrote the armchair anthropologist, “and having slain him he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.” Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have often cast their …
Sidney Hook and the Contemporary World. Essays on the Pragmatic Intelligence
How Nineteenth-century German Classicists Wrote the Jews Out of Ancient History
This essay considers why Jewish antiquity largely fell outside the purview of ancient historians in the Germanies for over half a century, between 1820 and 1880, and examines the nature of those portraits that did, in fact, arise. To do so, it interrogates discussions of Jewish antiquity in this half-century against the background of those political and national values that were consolidating across the German states. Ultimately, the article clai…
The Philological Apparatus
Philology haunts the humanities, through both its defendants and its detractors. This article examines the construction of philology as the premier science of the long nineteenth century in Europe. It aims to bring the history of philology up to date by taking it seriously as a science and giving it the kind of treatment that has dominated the history of science for the last generation: to reveal how practices, instruments, and cooperation create…
Sidney Hook and the Contemporary World. Essays on the Pragmatic Intelligence
Waiting at Nemi
In the first edition of his now fabled Golden Bough , James George Frazer began with the tale of an unnamed priest-king waiting for his slayer and successor in the sacred grove at Nemi. “A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest,” wrote the armchair anthropologist, “and having slain him he held office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.” Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have often cast their …
Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan
In this work, Paul Michael Kurtz examines the historiography of ancient Israel in the German Empire through the prism of religion, as a structuring framework not only for writings on the past but also for the writers of that past themselves. The author investigates what biblical scholars, theologians, orientalists, philologists, and ancient historians considered »religion« and »history« to be, how they understood these conceptual categories, and …
Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan
What did biblical scholars, theologians, orientalists, philologists, and ancient historians of the 19th century consider religion and history to be? How did they understand these conceptual categories, and why did they study them in the manner they did? Analyzing the figures of Julius Wellhausen and Hermann Gunkel, Paul Michael Kurtz examines the historiography of ancient Israel in the German Empire through the prism of religion, as a structuring…
How Nineteenth-century German Classicists Wrote the Jews Out of Ancient History
This essay considers why Jewish antiquity largely fell outside the purview of ancient historians in the Germanies for over half a century, between 1820 and 1880, and examines the nature of those portraits that did, in fact, arise. To do so, it interrogates discussions of Jewish antiquity in this half-century against the background of those political and national values that were consolidating across the German states. Ultimately, the article clai…
Defining Hellenistic Jews in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Hellenic language and culture occupy a deeply ambivalent place in the mapping of Jewish history. If the entanglement of the Jewish and the Greek became especially conflicted for modern Jews in philhellenic Europe, nowhere was it more vexed than in the German-speaking lands of the long nineteenth century. Amidst the modern redefinition of what it meant to be Jewish as well as doubts about the genuine Jewishness of Hellenistic Judaism, how did scho…
Is Kant among the Prophets? Hebrew Prophecy and German Historical Thought, 1880–1920
This article examines the interpretation of Hebrew prophecy by German Protestant scholars in the era of 1880–1920. It argues, first, that Old Testament interpreters valued the prophets since they presented God as the guiding force behind human history and, second, that these theologians cum philologians saw the prophetic conception of history as anticipating their own understanding of God in the world. The inquiry bases this argument on a reading…
The Philological Apparatus
Philology haunts the humanities, through both its defendants and its detractors. This article examines the construction of philology as the premier science of the long nineteenth century in Europe. It aims to bring the history of philology up to date by taking it seriously as a science and giving it the kind of treatment that has dominated the history of science for the last generation: to reveal how practices, instruments, and cooperation create…
Response to Adam Sutcliffe
These pages respond to insightful comments by Adam Sutcliffe on the author’s monograph ‘Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan: The Religion of Israel in Protestant Germany, 1871–1918’ (Mohr Siebeck, 2018) - first raised at a 2019 book review panel in Oxford and then elaborated in written form for this forum. The response focuses on four key issues: the place of Jewish voices, the representativity of the scholars selected for study, the rise of new sciences …
Jewish Catholicism
This article makes three arguments. First, it contends that the history of modern scholarship on ancient Judaism has erased Catholic scholars. As nineteenth-century Protestants dismissed Catholics as unscientific and unmodern, so contemporary historiography reinscribes those polemics. Second, the inquiry claims that some Catholics considered themselves part of a common historical science. In their sources, genres, accounts, and values, they opera…
Philosophy (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · History (4 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity (4 works) · Historiography (3 works) · History (3 works)